Education for Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions
Workshop summary
18 January 2004

Thematic Workshop I

Session 1. Welcome, Introduction of participants and about the workshop

Abdhesh Gangwar opened the workshop with a statement that described the need to look at the role of education in sustainable development in mountain areas. He outlined the trans-boundary issues, threats that mountains are facing. Mountain areas are fragile and cannot support the areas, he said, and there is the confrontation between traditional knowledge and modern or formal knowledge. He pointed out that a farmer doesn't know about biodiversity as a concept but practices it.

Session 2. Keynote address - Prof. P.S. Ramakrishnan, professor emeritus of Jawaharlal Nehru University

Prof Ramakrishnan pointed out that there is nothing like a 'pristine' ecosystem, and that 'relatively undisturbed' is a better term. He spoke of how root systems in the mountains are on the soil surface, that they soak up nutrients before they enter into the soil, that is loose and porous, and get washed away, and that when this is destroyed areas that get even 1,500 cm of rainfall can be barren. "Once the forest in these fragile areas has been destroyed there is almost no chance for it to come back."

He mentioned the practice of jhum, the conventional view of which is that it is responsible for degradation. A study of land degradation on the other hand showed that people from the plains are responsible for degradation, that industrialisation is a contributory factor leading to felling and destroying of forests on a large scale. Shifting agriculture is then done on a degraded system, and getting it back to the original state is either very slow or impossible, and the farmer then lives in a subsistence economy.

As Director of the G B Pant Institute he had a rapid social analysis of village communities done from the north-western Himalaya (with rainfall of 20 cm per year) to the east where Cherrapunji has 12 metres of rain. "The one interesting thing was that people wanted water during the dry season." Where there were traditional harvesting systems these were destroyed and we tried to revive it, sometimes using simple dug-out systems. We didn't have to ask what development did you want, Ramakrishnan explained, people came to us and told us the new systems, crops and species that they would like to try and we didn't have to give them suggestions.

He pointed out that right across the Himalaya people started improving their livelihoods because they were able to get water during the dry season, the biomass was built up, soil fertility built up, cropping patterns became diversified, more crops were introduced, and all this took place in some cases in as little as two years.

Prof Ramakrishnan pointed out that traditional societies view the mountain system as one in which they see themselves as part of the cultural landscape and that this is the approach taken by the UNESCO - World Heritage Natural Cultural Landscapes and/or Globally Important Ingenious Agricultural Systems programme.

He illustrated the strength of such systems with an example from the Apatani tribe of Arunachal Pradesh. Their wet rice cultivation gives them returns of 70-80 units of energy for a unit put in. The comparable figure in Punjab and Haryana with Green Revolution techniques is 0.5 units as a return, while in Northern economies like the USA it is 0.1 units. "It is a very ingenious system in the mountains because they live very close to nature and natural resources." The Apatani tribe, he said, have a year-round calendar of activities woven around their agriculture. It is not just producing economic goods but feeds into the minds of the people and that is what the cultural landscape is all about - a window for development and livelihood for sustainable societies.

Prof Ramakrishnan compared formal knowledge - a hypothetico-deductive process, delinked from the human dimension - with traditional knowledge, which contains societal perception, is an experiential process, and the human element. "You need to look at mountain systems not as ecological or social but as socio-ecological, and the most important connecting link is the traditional ecological knowledge available in the communities - the determining of the processes that go into the system, soil fertility management, water conservation, nutrient cycles etc." He said a connectivity needs to be established between traditional and formal systems, as a developmental pathway is given to mountain communities that is totally divorced from their value systems. The tools available to do so are the traditional knowledge base and their traditional institutions.

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In the Q&A session:

S Banerjee: The earlier cyclic period for jhum was longer, now the cycle has reduced which has an impact on ecology.

Prof Ramakrishnan: It is not population pressure that brought the jhum cycle down but the greedy exploitation of people from the plains. Even toay people are being bribed to cut down the trees. As a poor tribal I will accept the bribe. A detailed analysis of 200 research papers over last 50 year shows that there is no evidence that internal population pressure is responsible for deforestation and land degradation.

C N Anil: About jhum, population and the shortening of fallow cycles - policymakers also have this perception that population is the cause. Government policies are either plantation crops or alternatives. The answer has to be from the region whereas our problem is in looking for solutions from the plain. Ninety per cent of research agendas is how to increase crop productivity but fail to see innovations made by hill farmers. We need to learn and get the scientic needs from these communities themselves.

Prof Ramakrishnan: There is something totally wrong with our education system. It is high time we started going into innnovative pathways. What we need is to arrive at a compromise betwen the two systems - traditional knowledge and formal education.

Session 3. Transboundary co-operation for conservation in mountains

Chair: P T Sherpa Kerung, KEEP, Nepal

Presentation - Nakul Chhetri, ICIMOD, Nepal
Delivered a presentation about the Khangchendzonga landscape level biodiversity management programme, which incorporates trans-boundary biodiversity management. He spoke about ICIMOD's focus on policies, regional co-operation, capacity building and the overcoming of mountain vulnerabilities.

In the Q&A session:

S Pathak: What about the education aspect?

Chhetri: National consulations took place - these are also a means of education through sharing of experience, not formally. The village-level planning helps with apprising villages of biodiversity, protected areas, joint forest management. This enriches the community and us as well.

Presentation - Tenzim Tsultrim, Env. & Dev. Desk, Central Tibetan Administration
Tenzin talked about the condition of Tibetan nomads and the destruction of Tibet's western regional high-altitude grasslands following the Chinese occupation. He pointed out that the traditional nomadic population has been 'sedentarised', and also that there is no public participation in Chinese government policies for Tibet, that the Tibet region is the source for 10 major rivers.

Presentation - James Hindson, Field Studies Council (FSC), UK
Hindson spoke about working on trans-boundary projects (he is implementing one in the Caspian Sea region) and the FSC's work. The FSC has 17 centres in the UK, which annually 75,000 students visit. "We try and attract children from outside the protected areas so they can learn about them." The Caspian Environment Programme covers five countries with diverse cultural, religious and socio-economic differences. James Hindson said his group is trying to find a common philosophy for sustainable development for the region by working with school students 12-14 years old, and about 10 hours of study that can be delivered by teachers in each country, supported by common resources, using posters rather than textbooks.

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In the Q&A session:

Goswami: What do you face with trying to develop a common philosophy and understanding across these countries and cultures?
Hindson: The economy is a subset of society which is a subset of natural capital. The problem is that economy is consuming at a greater rate. Countries feel they can exploit resources to the limit and only then come back to the idea of sustainability. A lot of environmental problems are not so much environmental but political at heart.

Kalidasan: You talked about languages. We face the problem too. How to work with grassroots people without knowing their languages?
Hindson: The resources we develop will be in national languages. In this situation in the Caspian the unifying language is Russian but there is big resistance to it. I work through interpreters and making that effort is very important for exchange of ideas.

19 January 2004

Thematic Workshop II

Session 1. Carrying capacity and sustainable livelihoods

Chair: Rahul Goswami, journalist

Presentation - Samir Mehta, Bombay Environmental Action Group
Samir said that education needs to be done for all sections of society - like IFS and IAS also - apart from polcymakers and decision makers. There is a need for educating our elected representatives. He questioned how carrying capacity is determined and added that there is no standardisation, and an absence of data. Most carrying capacity studies are done using observation. Mehta also talked about the importance of legislation and litigation, the use of a combination of reports and court cases, but warned against opposition from entrenched interests.

In the Q&A session:

Pranav Trivedi: the concept of the public hearing. Mehta replied that a public hearing can be exploited by political and other interests to turn the result of such hearings away from what is expectred of them and cited his group's case in the Matheran hill station where that happened.

Nakul Chhetri: we need definitions of sustainable development and carrying capacity, that these are different in ecological, economic and social contexts, and that community needs are often ignored.

Shekhar Pathak: in an unsustainable political economy, how can we talk about what sustainable development is? It is different in local contexts.

G S Yonzone: Darjeeling town has been overloaded. Neither the municipality nor the West Bengal government appear concerned or responsive. The town has been completely destroyed.

Presentation - Prof G Bansal, HP Agriculture University
Bansal made a slide presentation on vermicomposting and its uses as a livelihood alternative for mountain systems. He said the economics of the system made it an attractive source of household revenue.

In the Q&A session:

Bansal was criticised by several participants for pursuing a system that goes "against the ethos of sustainability" as the worms used in his system have to be imported into the local setting. His explanation was that these were more efficient than local varieties. Participants said that bringing in new species was not a solution.

Presentation - Pasang D Lepcha, RCDC (NGO), Darjeeling
Darjeeling was planned during the colonial era as a town of no more than 20,000 inhabitants. Today it is home to 140,000 people and this is a big challenge for its carrying capacity. Hills are in any case very stressed under this paradigm of carrying capacity. Pasang said that tea is no longer relevant economically, that tea gardens are closing down and people are losing their livelihoods. The Plantation Labour Act [check] is not being followed. Tourism is being put forward as an alternative but there is the feeling that it will contribute to cultural erosion. Prerna [the NGO to which Pasang belongs] sees the tea social economy as one in which the people became "slaves in their own land". The important issues are now the development of organic farming, finding solutions for the water crisis, looking for and implementing waste management techniques.

In the Q&A session:

P T Sherpa Kerung: The symptoms of collapse in Darjeeling are all there - pressure from both local and international tourism. Untreated sewage, use of plastics and vehicular pressure.

Pasang D Lepcha: We have to decide betgween class or mass tourism.

A Gangwar: Where in India do we see examples of communities where carrying capacity has been factored into development and turned into a best practice?

P Trivedi: The Panchamarhi hill station is one, but the reasons there because of a combination of fores law and the army presence. Mt Abu in Rajasthan is another.

R Goswami: The islands of Lakshadweep, but driven by tourism-related needs and because of the confines of space - an economical reason and not necessarily a community insight.

Session 2. Resource degradation and sustainable resource utilisation inthe mountain region

Chair: Asha Bansal, HP Agriculture University

Opening remark: In the Lahaul-Spiti region of Himachal Pradesh there is a one-crop system. Traditional weavers are going out of the regioin, leaving their traditional jobs. Indigenous technologies are being abandoned, now most people use synthetic dyes.

Presentation - S S Samant, GBPIHED, Kullu
The work we do checks the breakdown of species biodiversity. From Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh we have five regions covered with reference to rare species, protected areas and biosphere regions. This is the status of biodiversity of the Himalaya. Economically viable species are big earners, some as much as Rs 2,500/kg. Species have been exploited for fuel and fodder - this has caused chronic forest problems, the loss of plant diversity. High-value species have poor regeneration, there has been a shift in the forest ecosystem, and there is the need for conservation of these species. There is in local communities an attitudinal difference towards government land and own land - trees on government land are lopped carelessly whereas otherwise they are lopped carefully and sustainably. Without a participatory approach it is very difficult to conserve. Training in several disciplines given by institute.

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In the Q&A session:

N Chhetri: Biodiversity is the use of the forest and habitat by people and wildlife, the intention is not to make it conservation-oriented. It has to have utility value, to be used. The question is how can we use that sustainably, for whom are we conserving - these need to be considered. Even legally there is a conservationist policy approach. In Nepal the concept of conservation is far ahead that of India because ownership is given to people. Because of that ownership the effectiveness of conservancy can be seen. There is a need to bring the institutional research into applied research now.

G S Yonzone: What are your achivements?

S S Samant: We have a database that draws on several studies. We have set up herbariums and herbal gardens, a nursery. We have done a biodiversity study of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, the Lahaul valley.

Presentation - Pranav Trivedi
The environmental regime in India is created by the Himalaya. Education is composed of basic ideas that can work anywhere, not necessarily just for mountains or elsewhere. We didn't want to create a rut for the child through our education work, instead a series of experiences. The connection between the urban child and resource is today severed. Our basic premiss was experience, that experience should generate information which will be relevant. Time is needed by the learner to reflect. We haven't told people about the Earth, the Greenhouse effect, but they are being told about their own lifestyles and not about issues. We have avoided naming - this is very important - because naming is the end of the learning process, of deduction. We have designed a sequential programme for several years for the children. We looked at values - if you call a tree alive then do something to show that it is alive. We need curiousity and interest to grow. Feelings need to be cultivated whereas conventionally feeling is not treated as education. An activity like giving each fallen leaf a burial teaches children about the soil cycle. We don't say don't use plastic, but this is how it interferes in the natural process. We give 'solitude time' for reflection. Students can actually change their lifestyle - some children have told their parents not to install air-conditioiners in cars. Cognitive outcomes are beoming clear, through role-playing abstract concepts became real. We have 1-5 day modules and in some schools our work slots into the main academic curriculum with scoring for this activity. Some school have nature clubs which led to synergy.

Ms D K Yonzone: Time is short for us teachers. We get stuck with trying to get through the syllabus. How do we do this sort of work?

P Trivedi: Try to link up with those doing activity outdoors. Tell those in the educational system that this work is useful and valuable. Convince the school that there is a curriculum linkage.

S Pathak: Have you also tried taking the children to the point where, just as they begin to see anew the natural world, they can also see the social and cultural aspects of their current lives and lifestyles?

P Trivedi: Some aspects have been addressed - they start seeing the difference between urban living and rural living. After being through our programme some children dread going back to the same routine.

Mitakshi Joshi: Who do you work with?

P Trivedi: Private schools. Students pay for their travel and stay. The school owners are progressive, open-minded and want environment to be a part of the curriculum.

G Bansal: Schools need to have nature clubs or eco clubs.

Presentation - Peter Lengyel, Unesco, Romania
I work in the Carpathian mountains of Romania. For the European Union (EU) there is a political decision to be sustainable, which is nice in political terms, but the reality is that the footprint of the EU is much bigger than surface area. People of Western Europe and America are thinking of sustainabilty on a small scale. In the existing structure it is difficult to have growth that is meaningful. The capitalist structure has an obsession with GDP. With Romania joining the EU the small-scale farms in Romania will have no chance to survive. Usually they are 3-4 hectare holdings, just enough for the farmer and family to eat and survive. Integration with the EU will mean new highways, more cars, intensive agriculture and foresty. From the perspective of biodiversity and sustainabilty it is not good. For a highway that costs a billion euro there is money, but for a bear for that highway which costs a few thousand euro there is not. The EU strategy is to stop biodiversity loss by 2010. In the Carpathians the biodiversity is very high compared with EU standards. In Romania there are still more than 6,000 bears and virgin forests in the Carpathians. After the 1989 revolution the poor poeple went out into the forests for poaching for their survival but the new rich went for illegal hunting. In a national park and biosphere reserve where we are working, in 15 years we've lost 600 chamois and the number is down to about 30. In other areas and other speciews we don't have data that is reliable. An average monthly salary in the country is EUR 150 but to abet illegal hunting can fetch EUR 7,000-10,000, a huge difference and temptatrion. Historically Romania had 80 per cent forest cover but by the end of communist rule it was 30 per cent and since the 1989 revolution we've lost more. With the corruption of the forestry system and rise of illegal logging, there is the export of timber to Western Europe.

In the Q&A session:

A Gangwar: The trend is that biodiversity-rich areas are seen as suppliers. They are resource-rich but have no stake in economic development, no bargaining power and are easily exploited.

P Lengyel: During communist times there was a trade group within the Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe. When this collapsed it created a huge social upheaval and relocation - people went back to rural areas. The majority of the Romanian population is happy to join the EU, they believe they will have a normal and better life. The trouble is that the media presents only the good part, they don't realise the obligations Romania will have. From 2000 to 2003 Romania has actually given out more towards its financial obligations to the EU, more than it has got back. We have actually financially helped the biodiversity conservation in countries like Germany and France. Now there is a competition for money, not friendship. The 10 new states [that will enter the EU] can't get the economic resources they need.

Session 3. Capacity building of stakeholders

Chair: Rahul Goswami, journalist

Presentation - C N Anil, ICIMOD, Nepal
Who ultimately is going to use information like biodiversity? There is a run for 'green gold'. Companies are being promoted by governments and it is the documentation and lists produced by research institutions that are being used commercially. The example of the Kani tribe in Kerala, with their 'energy' berry, is one of a resource and benefit sharing agreement. But otherwise, we don't know what part of the research was used commercially. This is what we mean by equity. Doing this on behalf of the communities is capacity building. Take our ICIMOD experience with jhum - it is a predominant form of mountain ecosystem management practice. The government of India spends about Rs 4,000 crore a year on hill states [check] for doing away with jhum, but hill farmers continue to do jhum. We documented case studies through the Himalaya and found changes in the ecosystem is taking place, being adapted by the farmers and being innovated.The diversity of biomass in shifting cultivation systems, compared with say an ICAR system, is far more. Sedentarisation is what is being pushed but the community doesn't want it. Ten years ago Tripura was pushed into producing rubber (a programme that had World Bank participation) instead of their traditional agricultural practice, then rubber prices collapsed. The 'Taxus baccata' tree (from which taxol is extracted) is being taken to companies which extract the active ingredient, but the farmers are not represented in fora. Who nees to be educated? The community? But they know what they are doing. There are farmers who have innovatively increased the cropping cycle by 100 percent which helps the fallow cycle. Wherever the jhum cycle has been able to be pushed up to seven years and above, the system is more productivce and biodiversity is proteccted. When we talk about environmental education it is not only academic institutions but other activities, talking to bureaucrats and decision-makers that is needed, to bring corporate stakeholders to the table, to look at community groups' form of partnership.

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In the Q&A session:

K Kalidasan: The banian exporters of Tirupur cannot produce without water from the Nilgiris, 100 km away, but being users they are not responsible for the biodiversity of the Nilgiris. The exporters should also help protect the ecosystem of the Nilgiris.

Presentation - J P Maithani, SFCID (NGO), Uttaranchal
We organised a campaign to collect polythene bags, also one for waste management. We are developing a nursery, trying to develop emotional linkages between tourists and the local populace. In district Chamoli families are occupied with basket weaving. We are building capacity for the conservation of the grass used to weave baskets, to fine-tune the practice of smoking which serves as natural dyeing of articles. We are putting together a guide for tourists and tour operators for high-altitude regions. We have formed a 'social army', this is provided training related to food processing and tourism and it also works to stop illegal practices, superstition, and carries out anti-liquor campaigns. There is a Mitravan concept - friends of the forests for fruits, fodder, fibre and fuel. Forest fire control is important and has the participation of women and youth. Since the forest now belongs to the Forest Department the feeling of responsibility and care has been diluted. We have also revived six traditional water harvesting structures. We provide training to teachers relating to the importance of natural resources.

In the Q&A session:

S Banerjee: There is no difference betwen eco-tourism and bio-tourism. People's participation is what is needed. What about forest protection committees?

Maithani: It depends on the behaviour of the forest officials or the community. There are several agencies and groups taking responsibilities - but with joint forest management structures there is conflict with villagers.

Sherpa: Ecotourism is a business, but also has to directly benefit the local community.

Banerjee: In tourism in North Bengal we have asked villagers to give their homes for tourist homestays. All other services (like bookings and logistics) are coming from outside providers. We've been able to to the same in the Sunderbans, where ex-poachers are used as guides.

Mehta: In Mahabaleshwar (Maharashtra) we tried a residential bed-and-breakfast scheme. The farmers started constructing urbanised buildings. The scheme has basically failed in terms of what we tried to do. Now they are running these as motels.

C P Anil: Take the government of bhutan. Ths country still has 80 per cent forest cover. The government charges visitors USD 200 a day, whereas in Nepal there is the backpacker who bargains over a cup of tea. Backpackers come with a different set of problems.

Gangwar: What is the success rate of the project when the facilitator withdraws? This is a big question: we were with a farmer who used to be our field guide, who still practices jhum the way he was doing 40 years ago. Understanding the language of the community or target group is not the only solution - the project inputs often do not last beyond the project period, and whether they do beyond that is a measure of success. For capacity building, any project approach usually has a poor success rate.

Goswami: The problem lies with determining the tourism dollar in the economical alternative mix. Government and planners and policy-makers tend to present tourism as a silver bullet that can solve the economic problems of the community. There is the over-emphasi on the perceived benefits of tourism, without taking into account the need for not just capital but human and social infrastructure building on the ground, the need for institutions that can adapt and accomodate such change. Tourism is a volatile industry and communities cannot afford to rely on it. Where this has been done communities have been bankrupted or been forced into highly destructive activities in order to stay solvent. Capacity building needs to be put into place for a range of economic alternatives of which tourism is one.

Chhetri: Sikkim is an example of a success - it has a tourism component in its master plan. They've tried to diversify into agricultural and other forms of tourism.

Presentation - Prem Bahukhandi, Shristi (NGO), Uttaranchal
As a participant of the Chipko movement I have conceptual questions. What capacity should I have to bring about change? Alliance building is the capacity we need. There are many conflicts we see in the Chipko, Tehri, Narmada movements. We need an information-gathering technique. We need to understand media and its techniques and how to use information-sharing and dissemination. As an NGO worker how do we look at these factors?

Chhetri: We tend to ignore the major cause of problems which is population growth, and all the consumption-related problems that go with that.

C P Anil: When the issue is social movements it brings together a combination of many things. Take the anti-arrack movement in Andhra Pradesh - it was a women-led movement. But this was capitalised upon by a bureaucrat who used that gathering to catalyse self-help groups. The idea is to continue to broaden the capbilities that arise from the movement.

Lengyel: Perceptions broadcast through the media from advertising go against the idea of sustainability. The attitude of the average European is: who can tell me that I can't have a bigger TV, why not?

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Session 4. Strengthening networks and partnerships

Chair - Phanidhar Gogoi, Society of Environmental Education of NE (SEENE), Assam

Presentation - Abdhesh Gangwar, CEE Himalaya
We need networks and partnerships to work as best we can. Having offices is useless in terms of efficiency. We build the capacity with a local NGO, we don't create anything new and add to the skill set locally. We need networks to cater to our clientele more effectively. Although there are so many mountain areas in the country and in South Asia there is very little cross-knowledge about each other. When it comes to mountain areas they don't know about each other - the link between Kohima and Kashmir. This can take the form of newsletters, email, communications, and using ICTs we can communicate. That will help bring mountain communities together, strengthening each other and solving our problems. Many things are being replicated, but these need not be duplicated. Often, putting in ICT infrastructure in local sites is not enough because basics like electricity are missing. How do we cater to community-based organisations - the grassroots groups. The web-based Mountain Forum is one such electronic network that can be effectively used. Many NGOs are doing excellent work but can't put the results of that work or the processes used together; our job is to be the facilitators and make it readable and understandable both locally and globally.

Presentation - Ms Liu Yunhua, WWF-China
The project we do is in the north-western Tibetan Autonomous Region. The network in the village is established by itself, just as community activities are. At an individual level and institutional level capacity-building is important. Some of this is organised through community learning centres, which also act by themselves and do community work, training. Also, they make committees to participate in higher-level decision-making processes. We're also talking about influence at township, prefecture and country level. How to develop issues at this level? This should also influence the other parts of China. The work is linked with higher education work in sustainble development. The host college and the community will interact - we call it praxis. It is an ambitious plan - we can call it radical or even revolutionary. In tibet or Inner Mongolia, the local people want their children to learn their ethnic language, according to government regulations the learning of the mother tongue is mandatory, but in practice this is not a reality as what is learnt doesn't meet the needs of the communities. We need learning based on the beliefs of the local people, learning systems using traditional knowledge.

C N Anil: This whole idea of information, there is plenty in all its forms. But how to make it usable? The challenge is what is the information that is available and how to create it into a knowledge object and make it accessible.

Gangwar: Also important is that for mountain people from Afghanistan to parts of China conflict is a common issue - we need to be aware of this. It is an area of deep concern and has an impact on the environment. This can't be quantified economically and also has a cultural impact. Anywhere there are mountains we have conflicts. The women are left when the men fight, and apart from the responsibilities of looking after the household and children must provide for the economical needs too. Transboundary protected areas are therefore very important. Mountain areas are very fragile and must be rid of conflict.

Lengyel: In Romania too there is conflict but groups that are otherwise hostile are working together on environmental issue. This is also the case in the former Yugoslavian states.

C N Anil: Afghanistan has the largest rangeland but what kind of development can you have there without de-mining the place? The mandate of ICIMOD is to transfer knowledge from one part to another. Community forest user groups in Nepal is a good example - the forest department can't tke any decision without consulting them.

Session 5. Closing remarks

Rahul Goswami

The sessions over two days have thrown up vibrant discusssion and an excellent exchange of ideas, views and perspectives. The group that has come together here in CEE Ahmedabad can serve their constituencies, their institutes, grassroots groups and the convenors of this ESD conference by networking about the issues discussed here. A regular exchange can be initiated with the distribution of the deliberations, which can serve as the base for dialogue from here on. CEE Ahmedabad and the Conference Secretariat warmly thank the workshop particpants.

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